By Ebere Inyama
(Ebonyi) Reactions have trailed the approval of $357,770 (₦ 551,502,142) by the Ebonyi State government to sponsor forty-six prospective pilgrims for the 2025 Hajj pilgrimage.
Based on this figure, each of the pilgrims will be sponsored with the sum of $7,777 (₦ 11.9 million).
This gesture by the Ebonyi state government is coming a few days after the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria’s (NAHCON), Executive Chairman, Professor Abdullahi Usman announced that the official fare for the 2025 Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia is $ 5,698 (₦ 8.7m ).
The Ebonyi state government has yet to clarify the reason for the additional $105 it approved for the sponsorship of the prospective pilgrims.
Nigerians react
Speaking during an interview with TruthNigeria, a beneficiary of the Enugu state – sponsored pilgrimage to Israel in 2016, Mr. Vitalis Diala said officials of some state governments in Nigeria deliberately inflate the cost of religious pilgrimages and afterwards, deduct the mark–up for their personal use.
“ The sponsorship of pilgrimages is also a business for the state governments. When they sponsor people for pilgrimages, they also make their money from there,” Diala began during the interview with TruthNigeria.
“ Ordinarily, it is supposed to be a religious affair but many of them go there for business”, he went on to say.
“ Part of the money earmarked for the sponsorship of pilgrimages by the various state governments are taken by the organizers of the pilgrimage.
“ The government should look into the activities of the organizers of religious pilgrimages and streamline the amount being spent to sponsor the pilgrims, “ he said.
Speaking further during the interview, Mr. Diala said during the time he went on pilgrimage to Israel through sponsorship by the Enugu state government, they were booked to spend two weeks in Israel but on the contrary, they were brought back to Nigeria after one week.
According to him, the organizers of the pilgrimage pocketed the money approved for their feeding and upkeep for the remaining one week and gave each pilgrim a paltry $30 as travel allowance.
Group petitions Ebonyi Assembly over sponsorship of 2025 Hajj
Irked by the approval of $357,770 by the Ebonyi State government to sponsor 46 Muslims to religious pilgrimage, the Association of Ebonyi Indigenes Socio-Cultural in the Diaspora (AEISCID) has called on the Ebonyi State House of Assembly to commence impeachment process against Governor Francis Nwifuru.
In a statement released in Abuja on Monday, February 10, 2025, the group’s President, Paschal Oluchukwu, described the decision to spend $357,770 on Hajj as reckless.
According to him, the governor’s action is an abuse of public office and a gross violation of Section 120 (subsections 3 and 4) of the 1999 Constitution which states that “No moneys shall be withdrawn from any public fund of the State, other than the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the State unless the issue of those moneys has been authorized by a law of the House of Assembly of the State.”
The group called on Governor Nwifuru to reverse the decision and apologize to the people of Ebonyi state.
Also reacting to the religious subsidy policy of Governor Francis Nwifuru in Ebonyi state, a non-governmental organization, Oganihu Ebonyi, has described the proposed spending of $357,770 by Ebonyi State government to support forty-six prospective Moslem pilgrims for the 2025 Hajj as “a misappropriation of resources.”
In a statement signed by the group’s director of Research and Publications, Ani Nwachukwu Agwu, and director, Media and Communications, Charles Otu, the group stated that “it is a crime against humanity for a government to engage in such frivolities,” adding that it “views religious subsidy as highest level of economic prodigality.”
Official defends Ebonyi government’s sponsorship of Hajj pilgrimage
In an attempt to explain why the sponsorship of each pilgrim will gulp $7,777 (₦ 11.9 million), the Ebonyi state commissioner for Information, Jude Okpor, said in a press statement in Abakiliki on 11 February, 2025 that the airfare for each of the 33 pilgrims would cost $5,632 (N8,626,800) to and from, adding that other allowances approved for the pilgrims are not included in the airfare.
“There was an obvious error in the computation of the total government expenditure in the sponsorship of the 2025 Hajj as contained in our earlier release,” Okpor began in the statement.
“The Hajj fare for the Southern Zone as announced by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) stands at $5,698 (₦8.7m) to and from,” he said.
“This is different from other allowances, charges and levies.
“Ebonyi State, as we know, is a secular state and hosts a diversity of population, each with different religious inclinations.
The state takes into consideration these diversities in relation to its funding of their religious pilgrimage, Christians and Muslims alike”, the statement read.
Cost of religious pilgrimage increased by 200 Percent in 1 year
Exactly one year after the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission put the pilgrimage cost to Rome and Greece at $1,958 (₦3m) per pilgrim, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria’s (NAHCON), has pegged the official fare for the 2025 Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia at $ 5,698 (₦ 8.7m ), representing a cost increase of nearly 200 per cent.
According to a the statement by the Director of Media and Public Relations for the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, Celestine Toruka, the amount was meant to cover the return flight, hotel accommodation, three-course meal per day, and tours of holy sites in both Rome and Greece in executive luxurious buses for six nights and seven days.
Ebere Inyama is an Imo state – based conflict reporter for TruthNigeria
